If you are not familiar with Viewpoint then you are in for either a treat or a controller throwing experience. It all depends on how you feel about tough games. Viewpoint 2064 was to be the games debut on the Nintendo 64 by Sammy Corporation in 1999 but that never happened. For some reason, completely unknown to this day, Sammy canceled the release. Now, the “master” edition is available to download and enjoy by anyone that wants to.
Game Preservation Is Important
Sure, companies like Nintendo would love to keep emulators and ROMs out of fans hands but while we can, we need to enjoy these things. Companies certainly are not doing much to keep even titles they did release available, let alone doing anything about unreleased ones.
With Viewpoint 2064, we are getting a wholly new title that took a previous release into the third dimension in a unique manner.
Viewpoint was originally released on the Neo Geo arcade/home platform, then ported to the Sega Genesis (but not Super Nintendo) and again to the Sony PlayStation as well as the Sharp X68000 and some other computer formats. All were isometric affairs like Zaxxon, a classic Sega arcade game that saw many ports to home platforms in the 80s.
A Game Known for Its Toughness
Viewpoint was well known for being a quarter muncher, this meant it was as tough as a Waffle House employee when a chair is thrown at them. You were not going to one man this game, let alone “no damage run” it.
You certainly will not see speed runners taking this challenge either. Partly because it is an auto-scroller, but it is also hard.
Viewpoint 2064 is a 3D affair that has branching levels in a similar manner to the Darius games (a classic 2D side scrolling shooter franchise). Unlike Sega’s Zaxxon, you are limited to low flight, but you can move a reticle around above you to lock onto enemies and hit them with a barrage of weapons. This is a mechanic that has been around since the Xevious days and popularized in games the Raystorm.
Special thanks to Hard4Games on YouTube for breaking the news and releasing the dump to the world. Also special thanks to GamesRadar for providing the link to Archive.org to download Viewpoint 2064 on Nintendo 64.
#hive #posh
I just found out about this game today. I didn't know about it before. From the video, it seems that the graphics and sound of this game are quite good.
This is my first time seeing it in action. I knew from magazines back in the day that there was a port of Viewpoint for the Nintendo 64 in development but only a screenshot or two was available. Not much to go on. Judging by the video, N64 fans missed out on a seemingly fun shooter.
I once considered spending a few weeks reviewing various games from the era when differences in console configurations actually resulted in slightly different graphics and/or forced new solutions. Unfortunately, it's one of those topics that serves as cool, yet ultimately unnecessary (for the average person) knowledge. It's nice to know, but you can do other things in the meantime.
It's great that there are people who care about preserving the memory of such games.
Back when I was heading up a self printed gaming magazine we started off with an idea similar to that - we paired off the SNES and Sega Genesis with games that hit both platforms and used pics to compare, discussed the differences, etc.
The #1 complaint over that angle was the SNES version was newer and it was unfair to compare Ghouls 'n Ghosts against Supe Ghosts 'n Goblins but no one complained about Contra Hard Corps against Contra III: The Alien War. Lol. Others complained about comparing closer released games but each was inherently different than the other console version making it an unfair comparison.
Moral of the story, do what you enjoy and ignore the haters. Don't let others ruin your fun. Life is too short.
That's right, the moral is very true. Yes, I've heard that sometimes lower-end Nintendo consoles performed better at certain things because the components they chose worked synergistically. And certain processors (or other parts) performed better at certain things than others.